What You Get For Dehumanizing People

 Lord Acton siad power orrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Americans never seem to take this enough to heart. How else explain Donald Trump? In America, we dehumanize people so we can imprison them. Our prison systems cannot survive treating people with dignity.

The women trapped in prison with their abusers: ‘They hold my life in their hands’

The case against Rodriguez has sparked outrage in California, but data suggests the women’s experiences are incredibly common. The last national survey of incarcerated people by the justice department, conducted in 2011 and 2012, counted roughly 47,000 people who had been sexually abused by staff in the previous 12 months, though the number is a significant undercount. The California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR), which imprisons nearly 4,000 women, logged more than 800 complaints of staff sexual abuse across the state last year.

“They say it’s one bad apple, but it’s not,” said Brown. “The abuse of prisoners is widespread but has largely gone unacknowledged.”